A STUNNING purple gem potentially worth nearly £300 million has been found in Sri Lanka.
The ‘Purple Star Sapphire’ weighs an incredible 3,563 carats – and may be the biggest natural star sapphire ever found.
A star sapphire is a type of sapphire gemstone that gives off a star-like reflection of light.
This is called asterism, and this particular gem has six-rays asterism, giving it an especially dazzling appearance.
The eye-catching gem has been named ‘Star of Pure Land’ and could be one of the most valuable ever discovered.
“This is the largest purple star sapphire of its kind,” said gemologist Ashan Amarsinghe, as reported by AP.
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“[It] shows a well-defined asterism. It has six rays asterism.
“That’s something special out of all the other stones.”
He said that the gem could be worth at least $300 million (£223 million), and potentially up to $400 million (£298 million).
The gem has been polished, and is owned by the Star of Pure Land Team, which is remaining anonymous.
Its owners say that the stone was discovered in a gem pit near Rathnapura, a remote Sri Lankan town.
The name Rathnapura is a Sanskrit word that means “city of gems”.
And it has a long-running mining industry focused on procuring precious stones like rubies and sapphires.
It was reportedly found in 2023, and was purchased with other gems that same year.
Then two years later, the owners discovered how special the stone was, before getting it certified by two laboratories.
Sapphires are precious gemstones, which are a variety of a mineral known as corundum.
They’re mostly made up of aluminium oxide, but they also include trace amounts of other elements.
They include iron, titanium, cobalt, lead, silicon and more.
Sapphire is usually blue, but they can also come in a range of other colours, including yellow, purple, orange, and green.
You can also get “parti sapphires” that show several colours.
When red corundum stones occur, they’re called rubies instead.
They’re one of the hardest minerals, coming in just below diamond and moissanite.
Star sapphires have intersecting needle-like inclusions, which is material trapped inside the mineral during its formation.
This follows the underlying crystal structure to create a six-rayed star pattern when light hits it.
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